Rice Cereal: A Success Story

Here goes nuthin'...

This evening, I spoke with Eli's pediatrician (who I absolutely adore, by the way) regarding our great bottle battle. She suggested that we go ahead and get started with rice cereal, as it often serves as a "bridge" for babies who really hate the bottle - once they learn to take food from a spoon, they're more apt to take it from a bottle as well. Even if it doesn't help with the bottle problem, it would be something to feed him when I'm not at home, so that whoever is watching him doesn't have to deal with a starving, screaming baby. For reasons I've mentioned in previous posts, I knew that rice cereal was just around the corner anyway, so we decided to go for it. 

We weren't terribly optimistic, given his bottle feeding antics. I figured that since he was refusing breast milk from a bottle, he would surely reject rice cereal (which, at this stage, is mostly breast milk) on a spoon, which is completely foreign. At least the nipple on a bottle is meant to approximate (however poorly) the "real thing"... But then again, maybe something completely foreign is just what he needed. Perhaps the key is not to try to substitute for the real thing, and just use a completely different delivery system that's new and interesting.

He was skeptical at first, but never got fussy and never completely rejected the spoon. He evaded a little by turning his head, but once we got a few spoonfuls in his mouth (which promptly oozed back out onto his bib, of course), he started to show some interest. He allowed us to stick the spoon into his mouth and sort of pour the cereal in - though most of it came back out with his tongue thrusting - but before long he was swallowing and opening his mouth for more! He even started making excited noises between spoonfuls :) Perhaps I should just share a little video footage...

The Aftermath... he took down the whole bowl (about 5 tbsp)!

He did such a great job, and we're so proud! Naturally, we're simply ecstatic about this success in light of the bottle issues. We'll keep on working at it this week so that hopefully by Saturday (and my first lengthy absence), we can be confident that if he won't take a bottle, he'll at least eat some cereal. 

Phew. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I'm starting to feel like a weight has been lifted :-)